Anarchy & Ink Tattoo

I'll start by saying it's been months since my husband and I received our tattoos - Feb 23rd, to be exact. My feeling after all this time is just....disappointment. We had only lived in the area a few months and saw Anarchy had great reviews on Yelp - so we decided to venture away from our usual tattoo shop in our hometown of San Diego and give someone else a shot. Our bad. I got a simple elephant that was drawn by my 13 year old daughter. Simple lines, no shading, just plain and very easy. As the months passed, the majority of the lines started to look broken. Almost like the skin wasn't pulled tight enough to get it smoothed out to draw a solid line on. It still looks great at first glance but when you really look at it, it's not so great. (And no, it's never exposed to sunlight that could have faded any lines.) Next, the tattoo my husband received just simply looks like junk. It is a mirror image of one on his opposite leg - the only difference is one is water and one is fire. But both are the same exact picture - just using different colors to make fire vs water. The water was done in SD and after 10 years still looks great. The fire was done at Anarchy and looks BEAT UP. The color wasn't faded correctly and the solid black "tribal lightening bolt" that runs through it is just terrible - dark on the ends and considerably lighter in the center. It took MONTHS for that sucker to heal. Almost two weeks of him struggling to walk. This has never happened before and I think it's fair to compare the two tattoos (and healing process) since they are mirror image tattoos. Neither of us are new to having tattoos and I just don't understand what went wrong with ours. Both artist seemed almost annoyed - like mine was way too small and easy and my husband's was too big and detailed. They didn't even wrap or cover his new tattoo when he was done - just took our money while seating the new customer behind us. I don't remember the tattoo artists names (the one who tattooed me was moving soon), but I would know them if I saw them and wouldn't let them tattoo me again. Sorry, Anarchy - I know you usually get great ratings - but we are two customers that are really disappointed in the job that was done. Guess we drive to SD anytime we want new artwork done and to have these new ones fixed. Bummer.
I'm reviewing this now, after all these months, because sometimes it's good to know how well a shop's tattoos hold up over time - and our just didn't. Plus, it took so long for my husbands to heal - I had to wait to post. I know everyone has a bad day now and then, it just sucks that our visit was on one of those days.
A lot of people do leave this shop happy - and we did leave happy - but after the healing process was done, that was when disappointment set in.
All this being said - we got a questionable vibe from the get-go and we should have paid attention. If you go in and all feels well - maybe you'll be lucky enough to get one of the many great tattoos other people have been lucky enough to get.

I went to yelp to find a place in palm springs for my BF and I to get a last minute cheesy traditional tattoo. We saw this place and read all the good reviews. I looked through the photos on here and saw a couple pieces I loved by the artist Matt Miller and knew this was my guy. Bright colors, clean lines, and the only traditional tattoos I've seen on yelp in Palm Springs. So I called to see if he could get us in. The guy at the shop told me there was no one by that name there. Bummed. So I figured we would go in and check out the portfolios of the other artists to see if we could find someone else. It was easy to find the location which I liked. We were greeted right away and sat down to check out the work. There was no one getting work done when we were there. We weren't that impressed with what we saw in the books.  However we liked a couple things by Derynne.  unfortunately she was at another location that day. Which we understand we went in on the fly and couldn't expect to be seen right then.  The gentlemen was very helpful and gave us her card and took down my email so we could get in contact with here in the future next time we found ourselves in PS. The shop was nice it just didn't have what we were looking for.

I'd like to start off by saying that the potential this shop has is awesome. They are obviously doing well because they were extremely busy when me and a few friends came in, which is why we were so excited to get tattooed at this shop (especially  because of the great yelp reviews!).

I am so completely disappointed, though, with the way they handled us. We had made three appointments about 2 1/2 weeks in advance because we were traveling out of town to Palm Springs and heard that Anarchy was the best.

I dealt with Sunny over the phone and he was nice. He told me we had appointments at 10:00pm March the 22nd for three people and that he would MAKE SURE there were artists available.

Cool, we were stoked to get our tattoos done.

We arrive March 22nd around 9:00pm. We figured since there were three of us we should show up early so the artists could get a good feel of what we wanted and then they would have time to draw it up.

Now, I'm used to tattoo shops. I know that MOST of the time, shop personnel aren't overly thrilled about anything like I am. BUT, at this tattoo parlor, there are two seperate rooms - one room for tattooing and one room for waiting. I get it - keeping them apart is better, but nonetheless, no one came to ask us if we needed anything or if we had appointments or WHATEVER really.

Finally, a young girl who was sitting in the waiting room with us asked if we needed anything. I didn't realize she worked there because she was all over her boyfriend and I thought they were waiting to get tattooed. I advised the girl that we had appointments at 10:00pm and that we were early. She went back to the tattooing room to see who our appointments were with, then she came back and asked who I had spoken with and then I told her Sunny.

She went back to the room and then a young man came out and kind of just looked at us like we didn't belong there. He asked if he could help us and I re-explained why we were there. He went back into the room and then peeked his head back into our room and said "you, come talk to Sunny." I said, okay.... then I walked back.

There were plenty of people there and the artists looked stressed out from how busy the shop was. I talked with Sunny who was about to start a tattoo and told him that we had appointments and blah blah blah - he remembered me. Then he told me to go back to the other room with my friends.

About a minute later, the young man who told me to go talk to Sunny came back in the room and advised me that they couldn't do our tattoos that evening. I was shocked! We had appointments that we had previously made!!! I stormed back and talked to Sunny and asked why he took these other people before us (because he had advised me they were just walk-ins) when he KNEW this was our only night to get tattoos AND we had appointments.

Basically Sunny said "too bad, sorry" and tried to call their sister shop to see if they had any room. They didn't either, so we were left shit out of luck!

I am so completely disappointed with they way they treated us and the fact that we had appointments didn't even matter. Ugh, I'm still mad about it. Shame on you Anarchy!